Hitting a downed character and zombie realism

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I had a situation the other day where the players were engaged in combat with some zombies.

One of the characters passed out due to exceeding his wound threshhold. Since the zombies were after flesh I had them continue to attack the downed player giving them advantage and so racking up more wounds. It became apparent that it would have been possible for these zombies to have feasted on his flesh for quite sometime before they racked up the necessary critical wounds to have killed him (waiting for the dice rolls to indicate crits), the player commented that it lessened the impact of the fight because he now realises it would take a lot for him to die. Normally with intelligent creatures I would have them move onto more threatening characters so this situation does not occur.

Do any of you have any idea how you would have run this zombie encounter situation? I'd be interested to hear any views on the subject.

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Well, the attack difficulty would go from 1 purple to zero purple. Sure, an attack can still miss (chewing on a boot I suppose like in the Walking Dead).

For coup de grace, each successful attack should auto-crit. For zombies...it would be more cinematic to have the characters guts dragged across town before death occurred..but each adjacent zombie should have gotten an additional bonus white die, as they aren't trying to kill a person at that point, just consume them. I think I'd rule that an automatic serious wound (severed leg at hip) would have applied.

If your player was belittling the fact, then definitely house rule it tougher next time.

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You only turn a Wound into a Criticals if you are knocked unconscious due to wounds, if you are fatigued or stressed into unconsciousness you do not do so.

Also if they are unconscious due to stress or fatigue it will take much longer to kill a PC, as they do not die unless wounds taken>wound threshold AND criticals taken>Toughness, an unconscious-due-to-stress PC could wake up with 8 criticals and still be alive!

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Well, first rule to fly out of the window because it doesn't make any sense at all. Falling unconscious because you are fatigued/stressed doesn't make you immortal ... I won't say any more regarding that rule.

If someone attacks a downed opponent he will die after getting hit TOUGHNESS times. (or sooner depending on the critical wounds)

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Nobody said you were immortal, even with normal wounds it's possible to be up and around with 8 Criticals.

The key point is that to die you need to have more criticals than your Toughness AND more wounds than your wound threshold. When unconscious due to stress/fatigue it is less likely that you have enough wounds to cross your WT but has the same likelihood that you will suffer criticals (as any attack against an unconscious foe inflicts a critical). If you are unconscious due to wounds then you will rack up the same number of criticals but you will be dead and not just unconscious.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Matchstickman

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It all comes down to the GM's perrogative. He can coup-de-grace and just kill a character in that situation. Or, he can roll to hit. Or, he can just assign a critical each round for each opponent still attacking them, etc. I'm sure there are other choices.

Once a character is unconscious, it is up to the GM what happens to the character in the story after that.

A smart opponent might "stick a sword in the unconscious guy's head", making it an immediate kill.

Animals (or zombies) might simply chew on whatever they can reach, which might be clothing instead of flesh.

It does make sense, if you are unconscious due to stress/fatigue, that you are further away from death, than someone who is unconscious due to blood loss/wounds. So, it should require opponents to do more physical damage to kill you. That said, because the character is unconscious, it is also easier to do more wounds. - For example, feel free to give NPCs additional damage, additional skill dice, negate armor or Toughness, etc. Whatever seems appropriate to you as the GM. That is the wonderfulness of WFRP, the flexibility that it gives the GM to craft the story.